CrysisReview

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By Ryan Clements

Crysis first arrived on the gaming scene in 2007, when it dropped jaws due to its unprecedented visuals. I'm not familiar with the minutia of PC tech, so from what I gathered, the original Crysis required a 400-ton mecha-tower with twin trilithium cores and a subspace generator. None of these things exist, but they illustrate the kind of rig you needed for Crysis to run back in the day.

While console gamers once stood out in the cold, peeking in through a frosted window at the warm living room of PC gaming, the wait for Crysis is now over. Developer Crytek's first-person shooter lives on the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live. Even better: it's set at a budget price. This makes Crysis an alluring purchase, considering its strong gunplay and emphasis on player choice. And even though a few stealth mishaps got me killed and angry, Crysis has aged well these past four years.

Exit Theatre Mode

Crysis starts with a routine military operation. North Koreans have occupied a remote island in the Philippine Sea following a discovery made by U.S. scientists conducting research in the area. Contact with the island is lost, so Team Raptor (that includes you) drops in to investigate. Everything goes wrong, and pretty soon you wind up face-to-face with some nasty aliens.

Crysis' greatest strength lies in its open-ended design. This design applies not only to the environments you trek across but also the ways you fight. In regards to the former, Crysis takes place in a series of gigantic environments. Objective locations remain clear throughout, but deciding how to get there is up to you. Do you run through the front door? Do you sneak around the back? Or do you avoid the enemy compound altogether? Looking back on the straight-forward paths I chose to complete my mission, I realized that I selected one of many, many options.

Combat itself also varies widely depending on your mood. The hook of Crysis is your Nanosuit, which provides you with several "modes" to activate at your discretion. These modes include strength, speed, armor, and stealth -- all self-explanatory and all tremendous weapons on the field. If you fancy the stealth approach, you can spend most of the campaign cloaked and only de-cloak to recharge your suit's power. If you want to play fast and frantic, you can dash your way through with guns blazing. You can also dispatch enemy forces by throwing boxes at them -- a tried and true military tactic.

Crysis Screenshots

These suit powers let you fill the shoes of the heroic badass in a number of ways, but I also dig the weapon customization included in Crysis. Guns can be modded with different parts acquired on the field, including various scopes, grenade attachments, and silencers. I get a special sort of joy laying in brush and de-cloaking for a fraction of a second to fire a silenced round into an enemy guard before re-cloaking. If only skilled actions like this rewarded you with experience or extra points. As it stands, Crysis lacks upgrade and leaderboard systems.

The technical issues of Crysis, including some minor slowdown, pop-in, and some sound drops, don't detract much from what is an otherwise satisfying, exhilarating shooter. My frustration comes mostly from failed stealth attempts, which bear a unique twinge of disappointment. Crysis strives for realism, so when you're detected by a far-off enemy while lying motionless in a bush, that realism breaks and the result works against you.

Over time I learned to cloak and de-cloak efficiently to avoid this problem, but it still annoyed me on occasion -- especially when a quick death results in 20 minutes of lost time.

The Verdict

The console version of Crysis doesn't look quite as good as its PC counterpart (and that's to be expected). It doesn't add any new campaign content, and it doesn't include the multiplayer support packaged with the original. With that said, it's a great buy for console owners. Even without the badass Nanosuit abilities the gunplay itself entertains. And considering how many different methods you can pursue to complete your mission, no two players will tackle Crysis in the same way.

If you stay patient with occasional stealth hiccups and the brutal frequency of death, Crysis will be well-worth your time, money, and the dangers of experimental Nanosuits.